  As she has told me twice today that I don't pay her as much attention as I do to her brother, well, she gets a post. She eats everything her brother won't. She smells sweet and has creamy olive skin. She had blonde streaks put in her hair which I regret. They are growing out now. She has eyes the colour of the sea. She has the longest blackest eyelashes I have ever seen. I think she has the cutest butt I have ever seen. She is so cute that she gets too much attention from people for being so cute.
Her most annoying habit is sucking her thumb and sticking her hand up my shirt. (We call this 'fiddling' - she sort of tickles you around the waistline and it drives me nuts when she does it...she has done it since she was a baby and I fear she will never stop. I think this will make outings with her a bit weird when she is in her twenties. She can sing. In Arabic. She shows great promise as a belly dancer and has inherited her father's musical talent. She is learning to play guitar. She is a total room trasher. She does not have a tidy bone in her body. She thinks it is perfectly ok to have her closet full of toys, books, crayons, barbies and other toys and shove her clothes, clean and dirty, under the bed.
She can wrestle her brother to the ground and pin him there by sitting on him. She knows the lyrics to every song she's ever heard. It's freaky how she does it. She never stops talking. Except when she's sucking her thumb. She has a stubborn streak a mile wide. When she 'digs her heels in' she is just like her father. She adores my mother. It's like she's known her before or something. I was never that close to my mother.
Animals are attracted to her. I call her Queen of The Chooks because when she is in the chookyard they all form a circle around her. She loves animals. Indiana (the horse up at the vineyard) adores her. He nuzzles her hair as though he can't get enough of her smell and follows her everywhere. He is so gentle around her. It's beautiful to watch them together. She is a natural horseperson.
She misses my Dad as much as I do. She talks about him a lot. Sometimes we have a little cry together when we talk about how much we miss him. He used to give her big bearhugs and tickle her. He would tell her stories about a bear that lived in his house that was shy and would hide when we came round...She had just started school when he died and one of my favourite memories is of taking her to see him on her first day.
She was in her uniform and stood in front of him, her great big grinning face beaming up at him. He told her that she was going to be the smartest girl in the world and go to university and make us all proud. I think he was right. 
